Horror Movie Fans, let's have discussions...

I like psychological scary movies but not slasher flicks. I still will watch Halloween on Halloween though. Kind of a tradition.

 

The original Holloween left something to the imagination when Micheal was supposedly killed and wasn't there lying on the ground. That made a rather average movie into a real good one. Its kind of like Plant of the Apes with Charlton Heston and they come upon the statue of liberty. Routine until then, with that though it became a classic. But like you, I don't care for much at all for slasher movies.

I was brought up on Boris Karloff Frankenstein, Bella Lagosi Dragula, Lon Cheney's wolfman and still love those old flicks. I like pretty much of Roger Corman's B Horror flicks. Then there was Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and the Hammer horror movies. I'll put on the 1940's and 1950's horror flick DVD's and spent hours watching them.

 

I'm not familiar with most of those, but I hear what you're saying. Slasher flicks are just gross and disturbing.

 

A few of those old B horror flicks actual had a decent plot. I remember one where one never seen the monster until the last shot at the end of the movie. It left a lot to the imagine and added the fear of the unknown and unseen. Suspense just built and continued to build. For some reason I was never into Zombies. Now I do like the combination of sci-fi and horror.

 

Meh, I'm not too into sci fi. Some of them are good though. As long as they aren't too gross. Like Starship Troopers. Bleh! I felt like gagging through most of that movie.

 

I just started a series on Facebook about my early association with horror films. I'll shortly reach the part about how I labored to learne the correct chronological sequence of the 1931-45 Universal films.

 

What about Tremors? I think there were four in that series? A mixture of comedy and horror, sort of. Speaking of comedy and horror mixed, Bud Abbot and Lou Costello were great doing that.

 

Strange how something can become a labor of love. I really never paid much attention to the dates, more to who was acting in them.

 

The fact is they tried to make the films follow a progression but didn't use numbers.
The actors were also a consideration.
Boris Karloff played the monster in the first 3 films. In the third film Lionel Atwill played a policeman with a wooden arm.
In the fourth film Lon Chaney Jt. played the monster. Bela Lugosi played Ygor in films 3 and 4 (not to be confused with Fritz-played by Dwight Frye-whom the monster killed in film one).
In film 4 Lionel Atwill plays a scientist who makes a deal and puts Ygor's brain in the monster.
The fifth Frankenstein film was Frankenstein meets the Wolfman with Lugosi as the monster and Chaney as Wolfman.
The sixth film was called House of Frankenstein. Karloff plays a mad scientist who revives the monster (now played by Glenn Strange because Chaney was in it as Wolfman again). Dracula shows up too, played by John Carradine because Lugosi changed to Fox Studios I think.
The seventh Frankenstein film is also the fourth Wolfman and fourth Dracula. Atwill is back as a different policeman. All monsters are eliminated. That was 1945 just before Atwill died.
Colin Clive (the original Dr. Frankenstein) died between the second and third film.
I had to watch every horror movie that came on tv for 3 years, straining to read the copyright dates, to figure that out.
It was many more years before I discovered the film between Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein (with Ygor using the monster to kill people) was never made. I want to make it!

 

I've never seen that. I've heard of Abbot and Costello but I've never seen their movies, so I really can't comment.

 

The main thing I remember from that movie is the shower scene.

 

Outside of the extreme exploitative horror, I also have a steady diet of good (or bad) trashy '80s horror movies.

 

Abbot and Costello were great. If you get a chance to watch any of their movies, I would. But I don't know if their brand of comedy would go over big in today's world.

 

Amazing. Lots of info that I never even thought to look into. I remember all those you mentioned except the Son of Frankenstein. Then again if I saw the movie, I bet you I would remember it. Perhaps it was just the name of it that throws me off. I forgot about the old Mummy movies with Boris Karloff and Lon Cheney Jr. I loved them all and I am saving all the info you provided. I doubt very few people really enjoy those old horror movies. Probably not enough special effects. But then again, that may be their charm to me.

 

The Mummy movies require close examination.
The first one (with Boris) has him human with severe wrinkles 10 years after he kills one idiot for reading the revival script in front of the tomb.
The next 3 have nothing to do with that one, but use the same footage for the ancient backstory. Tom Tyler (known mostly for westerns) did that with Lon Jr. doing the last 2.
I think they constitute the first planned trilogy. The last 2 came out the same year and were usually shown together. They almost had to to appease the censors because in the middle one, the Mummy gets the girl!
While the year the films came out is important the year the story takes place is usually vague, but the first Mummy story starts the same year as the King Tut expedition and I think there was another active dig when it was made.
The 3 films in the trilogy seem to take place about 30 years apart. The second is about 30 years after the first and definitely set in the present (1942) because a reporter mentions the Russian front (then in progress even if-as I suspect) the script was written shortly before Pearl Harbor was attacked.
That puts the third film in 1970 with no sci-fi type advancements or changed technology.
It's set in Louisiana so no progress could be reasonably expected in 29 years.
In the first of the 3 the funny little guy and taller straight man could have been played by Abbot and Costello. Their film career started the same year. Both characters die in the next film.

 

It's amazing that most of these old horror flicks were made fairly cheap by the standards of the day and still grossed quite a lot. I loved Abbot and Costello. They made a few horror/comedy movies. They also had a TV show for a while back in the 1950's. A planned trilogy, who would have thought. Most movies work like if the original is very successful, then they do a spin off and continue with spin offs as long as the movies make money.

I guess spin off is the right phrase, maybe no. Remake certainly not. I usually don't like any of the remakes. I loved the original Planet of the Apes with Charleton Heston and hated the Remake. I enjoyed the other four following the original with Heston. Sequels perhaps. The same with Journey to the Center of the Earth that had Pat Boone in it. Then remake, no thanks. What was good about all those old movies, Dracula, Mummy, Wolfman, whatever is they didn't rely on special effects to make the movie. A bat on a string seems stupid today, but back then when one was engrossed, it came off looking real. Today, they are just a joy to watch.

 

My problem with the original POTA series was that the ape became his own greatgrandfather. I suppose there was no other way.

 

I don't think any sequels were planned after the original, although I don't know that. The whole movie was kind of cheezy until right at he end. Then it became a cult film. Traveling back in time can be tricky.

 

When they committed to the third film they were obviously planning a loop. The last 2 films stunk but the fact they did what few other sci-fi films have ever done (explained how things got the way they were) makes it unique.
Can you imagine a prequel to Fahreinheit 451 giving a credible explanation about how the whole world renounced all reading, with only a few people who loved reading just for reading's sake?
You can't do it. If Orwell had a detailed explanation about how things changed from 1948 to 1984 that would be wonderful. He didn't, and as I pointed out elsewhere, it's impossible.
On the other hand it's not too hard to imagine an eccentric count keeping himself in a castle for 500 years nibbling the necks of a few unlucky visitors each year.
I haven't seen a terminator movie since part 2. Does the events from 1990-2030 in the saga make any sense at all?

 

I don't know, I watched the first two Terminators and that was it for me. Actually I think a fairly true account of Vlad the Impaler would include enough of the slasher movies that it would be quite popular among those who like slasher flicks. I am not a big fan of prequels, I loved the original star trek, star trek the next generation, but not star trek enterprise.

If one remembers the original star trek has a 2 episode "the menagerie" which dealt with Captain Pike. That was good enough for me. Call them flash back episodes. I would find an episode or two in the flash back mode to find out how earth or the federation discovered the Klingon's and the Romulan's, plus the Vulcan's.

I agree with you on the Planet of the Apes, the first three were great. But as usual, they didn't know when to quit. The last two needed a better scrip writer and a change of plots. Then again, at times it is better to leave the audience hanging and to use their imagination as to what might follow. Let the audience make their own ending or wonder what the future may hold.

Now I enjoyed the first three alien movies and the first two predator movies, but trying to combine them was a bit too much. Same with Fredie vs. Jason. Although I really didn't care for the originals or what came after.

 

If I'm not mistaken "The Managerie" is edited from the series pilot. The actor fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck.
I've seen the pilot. It stinks, but I don't really hold the show as high art even in its best moments.
To me it's cheating when Spock survives something near the end that killed a human earlier in the episode because Vulcans have a detail in their anatomy we don't have.
I say give the whole list in episode one so we'll know when we really have to worry about him.
The rules for Dracula kept changing too. Can he survive out of his coffin in the daytime as long as dark curtains are pulled? Can he become a puff of smoke, disappear or just change to a bat and fly away. Does he turn to dust when you kill him or just lay there with a stake in his chest? What's the deal with running water? Does the cross kill him like Kryptonite or just repulse him like Clockwork Orange? Would a Protestant have any defenses? Are all Unitarians hopeless?

 

I've noticed that with Dracula. If I remember correctly, even Bella Lagosi's Dracula could turn into a bat. It's been a long time, but I think the first time I seen running water kill Dracula was when Christopher Lee played him. The cross, that has been pretty much standard. Sunlight killing and turning Dracula to dust also. In the movie the Librarian in New Orleans, sunlight changed the woman vampire into sprinkles of light. A new twist. Perhaps all the new twists depend on how the scrip writer wants the hero to win by.

I'm trying to remember the old TV series "Dark Shadows." Been quite a long time since I watched any. But I do think old Barnabas Collins could survive during the day if all the curtains were drawn. Although I could be wrong about that.

I also can remember more than a couple of star trek eipsodes Spock is not affected by things humans are.

 

I'll try to itemize:
1931 Dracula: bat or wolf, impaled.
1935 Dracula's daughter: She burned his body, no changes.
1943 House of Frankenstein: dumped in a river.
1945: House of Dracula: exposed to sunlight.
1958 Hammer Dracula: 2 candlesticks forming cross forces him into sunlight. First his hand crumbles to dust, then other parts as the shadows move.
1960s Hammer Dracula: someone shoots ice under his feet. He drops in.
Next Hammer Dracula: He's frozen. A priest cracks his head on the ice. The blood trickles into his mouth and he revives.
Late 70s vampire: made for tv: Inside a boat daytime, ok until curtains go up.
One of the Universal Draculas could become a puff of smoke.
A one-off substitute for Christopher Lee died in the shadow of a windmill!
Barnabus Collins originally could disappear but could not become an animal.
After becoming human for a time then turning back he lost that ability.
1990s Dark Shadows: As Julia tried to cure him he could spend small amounts of time in sunlight.
Spock survived a monster that drains salt from a body.
He recovered from blindness because of a third eyelid that closes when the optic nerve is in danger.
His pattern of aging and symptoms were different in the one they all got old.
Of course he could die from laughing too much.
The way they brought him back to life in Star Trek 3 made most worry pointless, didn't it?

 

You have all this stuff down pat, amazing. I suppose that bring Spock back the way they did shouldn't have been surprising. After all, it was the Genesis Planet. With these types of movies one can do almost anything one wants. A little imagination, then poof. All the magic one wants.

Movies are an escape from reality. One knows Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, Frankenstein Monster will be killed in the end, that all the main characters and especially the star will survive. Of course in then remake of the original 1950's movie, "The Thing," they all died. Think that one had Kirk Russel in it. The original The Thing from Outer Space had James Arness playing the Thing. Gunsmoke. Arness played an FBI guy in another movie about giants ants, "Them."

Now those post atomic bomb movies I also liked. I still watch them. Giant Gila Monsters, spiders, ants, bunnies, grasshoppers, rats, you name it, giant almost anything.

 

My Facebook essay reached 1978 last night but I missed the big bug movies. I'll get them when I backtrack to demonstrate that The Ten Commandments is one of the greatest horror films ever and the cast was the key hint.
John Carradine: Dracula and Aaron
Yvonne DeCarlo: Zipporah and Lilly Munster
Leo G. Carroll: Tarantula
Charlton Heston: Moses and (not long before) Heart of the Jungle, in which he fights an army of little man-eating ants!